Societe Anonyme

This beautifully illustrated book highlights the unique history of the Societe Anonyme, Inc., an organisation founded in 1920 by the artists Katherine S. Dreier (1877-1952), Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), and Man Ray (1890-1976). As America's first 'experimental museum' for modern art, the "Societe Anonyme" provided a means for artists, rather than historians, to chronicle the rise of modernism. Led by Dreier and Duchamp, the group eventually assembled a collection of more than one thousand artworks, which it presented to the public in a variety of innovative programmes, publications and exhibitions. The incredible collection of the "Societe Anonyme" now belongs to the Yale University Art Gallery, a gift from the Societe and Dreier. It features the work of more than one hundred artists, many of whom are among the century's most renowned, including Jean Arp, Duchamp, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, El Lissitzky, Piet Mondrian, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters and Joseph Stella, as well as works by lesser-known artists whose contributions to modernism are substantial. With new archival information, including personal correspondence between Dreier and the artists whose work she assembled, a host of previously unpublished images, and essays by leading scholars, this fascinating book is essential to our understanding of the reception and interpretation of modernism in America.